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Article snippet: Teenaged survivors of the Parkland, Fla. High school shooting have amassed huge followings on social media in the weeks since a gunman attacked their school, assembling powerful social media tools in the national debate over guns and mass shootings. Senior Emma Gonzalez, who now has more than 1.1 million followers on Twitter, has seen her audience expand by tens of thousands of new followers each day since Feb. 19 according to data from SocialBlade. Gonzalez now has more Twitter followers than the National Rifle Association, which has more than 600,000 followers, as well as NRA spokesperson Dana Loesch, who has almost 800,000 followers. Senior David Hogg and junior Sarah Chadwick, two other students who have made multiple appearances on national television, each have hundreds of thousands of followers as well. The teenagers have built their followings in part by being able to engage in the kind of combative, often humorous tweets that get social media attention. Their curt responses to conservative media personalities have earned tens of thousands of retweets. Experts on digital media say the students, who grew up around social media, have been able to use Twitter more effectively than their anti-gun control adversaries. Mike Horning, a communications professor at Virginia Tech, said that teenagers like Gonzalez and Hogg have spent their entire lives on the internet. “They’ve grown up in these digital worlds where they can jump from one platform to another. Th... Link to the full article to read more